[1] In the 2009 election, incumbent Burlington mayor (Bob Kiss) won reelection as a member of the Vermont Progressive Party,[2] defeating Kurt Wright in the final round with 48% of the vote (51.5% excluding exhausted ballots).

[3] Unlike the city's first IRV election three years prior, however, Kiss was neither the plurality winner (Republican Kurt Wright) nor the majority-preferred candidate (Democrat Andy Montroll).

[9] The 2006 Burlington mayoral election was decided by two rounds of IRV tallying, selecting candidate Bob Kiss of the Vermont Progressive Party (VPP).

The elimination rounds were as follows:[10] FairVote touted the 2009 election as one of its major success stories, with IRV helping the city avoid the cost of a traditional runoff (which would not have affected the results).

[24] In December 2009, a group called "One Person, One Vote", made up of Republicans and Democrats unhappy with the election outcome, held a press conference to announce that they had collected enough signatures for an initiative to repeal IRV.

[6][7][8] Republican Governor Jim Douglas signed the repeal into law in April 2010, saying "Voting ought to be transparent and easy to understand, and affects the will of the voters in a direct way.

In 2011, for example, an initiative effort to increase the winning threshold from the 40% plurality to a 50% majority failed by 58.5% to 41.5%,[30] while in 2019, instant-runoff voting was once again proposed for Burlington by Councilor Jack Hanson but went unapproved by the Charter Change Committee for the March 2020 ballot.

[31] One year later, in July 2020, the city council voted 6–5 in support of a measure to reinstate IRV, but it was vetoed by Mayor Miro Weinberger the following month.